This blog was first titled Tableau Digest Weekly; then shortened to Tableau Digest (so I could avoid the ‘weekly’ pressure). When Tracy revived it, she renamed it Community Digest, which I think works well.

So in this, my first guest Community Digest post, I’m going to honor the full expanse of Tracy’s title, and pull tidbits from throughout our Tableau Community (not just the forums). I’m also going to base my selections on both items suggested to me by Community members (thanks folks!), and things I personally found interesting, clever, humorous, or just plain cool. So here we go….

Best Tableausplaining

While I suspectJonathan Drummey will dominate this sort of category, Jim Wahl (and others) will occasionally slip in here. What’s Tableausplaining ? Well it is: The best, most detailed explanation of something Tableau – especially when it’s applicable to broader issues/needs. This past week, Jonathan provided a great example: Re: LOD[Note Matt Lutton 's comment! Forum posts do get noticed/shared inside Tableau. What you say can have an impact.]

Viz of the Week

I would hate to be tasked with picking a Viz of the Day, I have no idea how they do it! Of the three daily winners this past week, I found Richard Speight's viz titled Britain in Europe Renegotiation Scorecard the most engaging. I learned a lot I didn't know about various countries and their positions, attitudes within the EU.

Educational Brain Teasers

These don’t come around often, but when they do most of us learn something, no matter what level of Tableau knowledge we possess. I recommend you always give these a go; you will learn a lot about both Tableau’s limitations, and the clever workarounds Forum Folks come up with. This week’s Teaser was especially a great learning experience, in many different ways: Got a fun Educational Brain Teaser. Great job Rody Zakovich! And for an added bonus check out Steve Mayer's add-on challenge.

Makeover Monday

Just in case you missed it, the Andys have join forces and are upping the Makeover Monday game! Here’s a blog on what it’s about, and how you can participate: Viz the Makeover Monday Challenge

Server

Not being much of a Server guy myself, I reached out to Jeffrey Straussto provide stuff for this section. Here are his thoughts:

Did you know?

As of Tableau Server 9.2, automation of AD synchronization is now available. This reduces any manual admin task of ensuring access to content is correct.

Besides answering a whole lot of Forum questions, we Ambassadors have other tasks and responsibilities, mostly around improving our Forums. Recently we helped the Community Team decide to make two new improvements:

Direct Messaging was add last week (after a great deal of discussions). Let us know what you think!

Employee Icons have been added after an employee's name. So it's now much easier to tell who's doing the posting. When I know it's an Tableau employee, I'll pay much closer attention to what's being said. The icons look like this:

That's it for me. I just wanted to mix it up a bit. tracyrodgersmay be adding some of the usual Digest sections.

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Thanks Shawn, here are some quick stats per usual - several which were already mentioned by you :

Congratulations to Steve Mayer who received the "Questions for Breakfast" badge this past week - meaning 25+ of his responses were marked as correct by other people. Steve has been a member of the community since 2014 - and we're happy to have him sharing his knowledge with all of us - and even challenging Rody with alternative brain teasers

Welcome to your weekly dose of the Community Digest. There are always so many conversations and things happening in this community, that it's hard to capture it all! Here's a quick glimpse -

Announcements

You may have also started noticing some little badges next to people's names. In particular - Tableau Employees and Tableau Ambassadors. Now, you'll be able to easily see whether someone you're talking to works at Tableau. Below, you're able to quickly see that bunny.hirschmann is a Tableau employee.

Have you heard that our Tableau Support team now has a Twitter handle of their own to answer questions? Read this blog post to learn about another way that you can get answers to your questions: Introducing @TableauSupport! | Tableau Software

Recognition

If you saw the front page of the Community, you might have seen that Rody Zakovich is in our Community Ambassador Spotlight! This is a new series that we'll doing to highlight our Ambassadors. Rody has been a fabulous member of our community and working with him has made working with him such a pleasure. To learn more about Rody, check out Tableau Ambassador Spotlight - Rody Zakovich

Most Talked About Thread

**This is characterized by the number of responses to the thread

Ajeet ... is running into an ATTR Problem when he is trying to create a calculated field from two different data sources - Excel and a MySQL db. Łukasz Majewski and Tableau kumar provided a couple of screenshots and updated formulas to get a better understanding of the issue that Ajeet was running into. Amanjot Klair tried explaining why the ATTR was appearing in the first place, explaining that it was because it was coming from the secondary source. He shared a post that goes into more detail. Hopefully, this helped Ajeet - if so, let us know what happened and how you solved the issue!

(One of the) Top Viewed Threads

Rahul Panday asked a question about when to LOD calculations. He got a lot of valuable feedback and perspectives from Simon Runc, Amanjot Klair, Ben Neville, Rody Zakovich, and Jonathan Drummey. Jonathan, in particular, parsed out some different scenarios for when to use a LOD vs. a table calculation vs. a simple regular aggregate. I would definitely recommend bookmarking this thread if you haven't already!

In Other News

I love when people learn about tabcmd as in this post by K P who wanted to have Automated dashboard images. Derrick Austin showed how it could be done. Tyler Garrett then continued the conversation showing how it could be done in a more automated way using scripts and powershell.

You also may have noticed that the Tableau corporate website got a redesign - and Community is now in the header! I know, I know, the community header/footer doesn't match - yet. We'll get that taken care of this week.

Recognition

Two members received the "I Know Stuff!!" badge - meaning that 10+ of their answers have been marked as correct. Jaideep Rokade and Venu Babu Kolasani both joined the community in the summer/fall of 2014, and have recently been more active in the community. Venu has even shared what he's learned about the differences between extract filters and data source filters - Difference Between Extract Filters and Data Source Filters. Thank you both for your contributions! Hopefully, we'll continue seeing you around!

Happy Monday everyone! I'm back in the office this week and it sounds like I missed a pretty busy one last week! Let's take a look -

Announcements

In case you missed it, last week we had our first ever Developer Office Hours where a couple of our Tableau Developers who work(ed) on the REST API got on a Webex and answered questions from the community. Sounds like it was a success! To see the recording and some of the questions people asked, check out this thread: Join us for Developer Office Hours: REST API

Recognition

Gerardo Varela achieved the "I Know Stuff" badge - meaning 10 of his responses have been marked as correct. Gerardo has been a member of the Tableau Community since 2013, but recently has started becoming more active. From the looks of things, he has knowledge in many areas of Tableau. Thanks for all your help Gerardo and hopefully, we'll continue to see you in the community!

Most Talked About Thread

ChandraSheker A asked a question about Counting where he wants to get the number of non-null customers respective to a given date. However, he's running into issues. It looks like there's an issue with how his data is set up as Stephen Lavery mentions. Shawn Wallwork provided a couple of options using an ifnull calculation, but it still wasn't working as desired. It looks like veronica.simoes.0 also provided a workbook - however, it looks like it might be a different version than what CJ is using. Let us know if you got it figured out CJ or if you need more help!

I have the pleasure of writing up this week's digest while Tracy is out so let's start with today in history: Today in 1884 the first Oxford English Dictionary was released after 27 years in development. Pretty cool stuff! With that, let's take a look at the Community.

Announcements

We have our first ever Dev Office Hours will be held this Wednesday at 10am PST. The office hours will focus on the REST API and our developers are currently accepting questions here: Join us for Developer Office Hours: REST API. Our very own Ben Lower is leading the event and we're all super excited to open a conversation between our customers and developers.

Recognition

As touched upon earlier, we have new Tableau Ambassadors! It's my pleasure to introduce our three new Community Ambassadors: Daniel Vincent, Norbert Maijoor, and Rody Zakovich! All three of them have been instrumental in fostering an active and welcoming Community. Daniel has done a wonderful job helping with calculations, user issues, and letting users know what information could help to find an answer. Norbert always brings an excitement to his answers while providing excellent resources, workbooks, and answers. Rody has somehow found time to become one of our most active Community members thanks to a decreased emphasis on sleep, and even more puzzlingly, is seemingly never grumpy. Thank you to all three of you on behalf of the Community team and Tableau!

Congrats and thank you to Niccolo Cirone, Kent Sloan, and Rajeev Pandey for being the three newest Community members to have received the "I Know Stuff!!" badge recognizing 10 answers having been marked as correct!

Most Talked About Thread

A few days ago Tianyi Zhou asked about adding a scroll bar for a long timeline which has lead to a combined group effort to find a solution. Venu Babu Kolasani and Joe Oppelt have been helping out but they're still looking for a solution. Check it out and see if you can help!

(One of the) Top Viewed Threads

kettan's wonderful thread YOY YTD Bar Chart continues to garner views (over 16K!!) and help users in our Community both fresh and old. Thanks again for all the work you do.